THREATS AND RESPONSES: WAR OF WORDS; Intelligence Officials Search for Links Between Al Qaeda's Leaders and Latest Plot

By SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI; Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, for this article.

Published: August 14, 2006

Like some terrorist version of broadcast pundits, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri address the world by video or audio every few weeks, exhorting their followers to jihad, taunting their enemies and offering sometimes grandiose commentary on current events.

Whether that is all they can do from their hide-outs in Pakistan is a question that intelligence officials in the United States and Europe are urgently trying to answer.

''They keep informed, that is clear,'' said Olivier Roy, research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research and an expert on Islamist terror networks. ''Whether they have any operational role is very hard to say.''

The arrest in Britain last week of a score of Muslims of Pakistani ancestry, accused of an ambitious plot to blow up trans-Atlantic jetliners, has returned a spotlight to the top two leaders of Al Qaeda, who for five years have evaded one of history's biggest manhunts.

Because there are clear connections between the Britons arrested in and around London and their accused co-conspirators detained in Pakistan, officials have not ruled out the possibility of communications between the plotters and the Qaeda chiefs. No one has suggested that either man directed the scheme -- but the fact that neither Mr. bin Laden or Mr. Zawahri has been captured suggests that Western intelligence agencies' knowledge of their activities is minimal.

In Senate testimony in June, Henry A. Crumpton, the State Department's counterterrorism chief, suggested that American-led efforts to pursue the two had severely limited their ability to act.

''There is evidence that core leaders, including bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, are frustrated by their lack of direct control,'' Mr. Crumpton said, asserting that they had been isolated as they lost safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan. ''We must retain this unrelenting pressure against Al Qaeda, especially their leadership, to further diminish the links throughout their global networks.''

American diplomats in the region play down the importance of Mr. bin Laden, saying Pakistani military operations in the northwest region of Waziristan have curtailed his movements. They are less certain of the limits on Mr. Zawahri.

Michael Scheuer, who tracked Mr. bin Laden in the 1990's at the Central Intelligence Agency, is skeptical about the standard government claim that the two men are on the run.

''If we were really chasing them around, we would have them by now,'' Mr. Scheuer said. He said it was clear that the Qaeda leaders still had some operational ability because they were able to make audio and video tapes and to send them to allies who post them on the Web or pass them to Al Jazeera, the Arabic television channel in Qatar.

Since the two leaders have often said their role is to inspire the global jihad, their ability to get their message out is itself a notable achievement. In a letter last year to the leader of the Iraq insurgency, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Mr. Zawahri wrote, ''We are in a battle, and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media.''

Mr. Zarqawi was killed on June 7, when American forces located him at a safe house north of Baghdad and dropped two 500-pound bombs on it.

An analysis by the private Virginia company IntelCenter said that Al Qaeda's clandestine media operation in Pakistan, As-Sahab, had released at a record pace this year 37 video and audio messages through the end of July, including 6 from Mr. bin Laden and 11 from Mr. Zawahri.

''I just don't see that they have any trouble disseminating information to followers, and they seem to have more sophisticated communications than they did six months ago,'' said Chris Heffelfinger, a terrorism analyst who monitors jihadist Web sites for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.

Some American officials concede that the loyalty both men inspire makes even the large bounty on their heads -- up to $25 million each -- an ineffective weapon. ''I'm not sure that the $25 million does a damn bit of good,'' said one American intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Counterterrorism experts agree that Pakistan has become the most important center for jihadist networks, in some ways replicating the role of Afghanistan before American troops ousted Al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors in late 2001.

The efforts of the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to help American antiterrorist operations have been limited both by the popularity in Pakistan of groups violently opposing Indian control of Kashmir and by his government's minimal control over the lawless tribal areas along the Afghanistan border.

It is in those areas that Mr. bin Laden, the 49-year-old son of a Saudi construction magnate, and Mr. Zawahri, 55, an Egyptian doctor who was jailed and tortured in Egypt in the 1980's, are believed to be in separate hiding places.

The American intelligence official said the men are believed to have direct contact with a small number of trusted aides who speak to others for them. ''They're extremely careful about who they talk to,'' the official said.

American military and intelligence agencies have made repeated attempts to hunt them down. In January a missile fired by an American Predator drone, a pilotless aircraft, targeted a house in the tribal Bajaur district where Mr. Zawahri was believed to be attending a dinner; it killed 18 civilians and a number of militants, Pakistani officials said, but missed its prime target.

In typically defiant style, Mr. Zawahri responded two weeks later with a taunting video statement broadcast on Al Jazeera.

Calling President Bush a ''failed crusader,'' Mr. Zawahri asked: ''Bush, do you know where I am? I am among the Muslim masses enjoying their care with God's blessings and sharing with them their holy war against you until we defeat you.''

As often in such tapes, Mr. Zawahri addressed ''the American people,'' saying ''Bush and his gangs are shedding your blood and wasting your money in frustrated adventures'' in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. bin Laden's somewhat rarer recent pronouncements have been audiotapes accompanied by a still photo, perhaps indicating that he wanted to avoid video cameras for security reasons. Like his deputy, he often makes reference to current events, implicitly asserting a claim to leadership in the Muslim world.

''They try to connect all the different crises, in Iraq, Lebanon, other places, and present themselves as the vanguard of the global Muslim community,'' said Mr. Roy, the French terrorism expert.

In April, Mr. bin Laden urged jihadists to go to the troubled Darfur region of Sudan if Western troops were deployed there. In May, he recounted his selection of the 19 hijackers for the Sept. 11 attacks and insisted that the just-sentenced Zacarias Moussaoui was not one of them. In June, he eulogized the just-killed Mr. Zarqawi as a fellow ''lion of Islam.''

''Even if we lost one of our greatest knights and princes, we are happy that we have found a symbol for our great Islamic nations, one that the mujahedeen will remember and praise in poetry and in stories secretly and aloud,'' Mr. bin Laden declared in the rambling 19-minute tape.

Chart/Photos: ''Al Qaeda Messages''
At least 37 messages attributed to Al Qaeda have been broadcast in 2006. Six have been attributed to Mr. bin Laden and 11 to Ayman al-Zawahri, his deputy. Here is a look at their major statements:

Osama bin Laden

June 30 -- Vows Al Qaeda will continue to fight U.S. forces and their allies anywhere in the world.

May 23 -- Says that Zacarias Moussaoui had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S.

April 23 -- Says Western efforts to isolate the Palestinian Hamas government and to intervene in the Darfur crisis in Sudan are examples of the West's ''crusader war'' against Islam.

Jan. 19 -- Warns that Al Qaeda is preparing for future attacks inside the U.S. but that the group would be open to a conditional truce with Americans.

Ayman al-Zawahri

July 27 -- Warns that his group would not stand by and watch Israel bombard Lebanon and the Palestinians.

July 7 -- On the first anniversary of the London bombings, says two of the bombers had been trained in Qaeda camps.

June 22 -- Vows vengeance against the U.S. for the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

June 9 -- Urges Palestinians to reject a referendum on a statehood proposal that recognizes Israel.

April 29 -- Says that hundreds of suicide bombers have ''broken America's back'' in Iraq.

Jan. 30 -- Says he survived the Jan.13 U.S. airstrike in Pakistan aimed at a pro-Taliban village.

Jan. 6 -- Says President Bush's plans to withdraw troops from Iraq mean that the U.S. has been defeated by the Muslims.